Results

Denis Kouamé Kanga, a 43 year old cocoa farmer from the Ivory Coast, is in very good spirits these days. The reason weighs 358 kilograms and represents the impressive 70% increase in the crop yield of his one acre farm over the last year. As a result his family will soon be able to move from a simple mud house to a newly-built brick house on the other side of the street. „Attending the Farmer Field School changed my life completely,“ explains Denis Kanga with enthusiasm. "During the weekly training sessions, I learned new practices for crop growing and how to combat disease more effectively. I have also learned to recognize any problems that occur on my plantation earlier and to analyze more precisely how to avoid damages or losses due to wrong decisions”, the cocoa farmer points out. “Instead of costly investments, the new practices only require little effort and courage,” is howDenis Kanga summarizes his experiences.

Challenge

The Ivory Coast, by far the number one cocoa producing country worldwide, produced 1.1 million tons of cocoa in 2002. More than half of the nearly eighteen million residents earn their livelihood from tropical agriculture, either growing cocoa or coffee, pineapples, cotton or wood. Due to extensive husbandry and widespread monoculture which has strongly reduced biodiversity, the productivity of conventional cocoa farming is rather low, stagnating at an average of 400 kg per acre. The practices cocoa farmers have applied for generations are out-dated and far removed from state-of-the-art know-how. As such,  small-scale farmers get caught in the vicious cycle of low productivity and income. Another consequence are weak farmer organizations unable to explore marketing opportunities and achieve targeted improvement in cocoa farming.

Actions Taken

Within the project, 30 Farmer Field Schools and 64 demonstration plots were set up to train 1800 cocoa farmers in sustainable best practices and Rainforest Alliance standards, e.g. integrated pest management, pruning, nursery management, on cocoa processing and shade tree handling with the objective of improving production and to certify the harvest within a fruitful commercial partnership with Kraft Foods. Farmer promoters were trained within the six cooperatives involved to conduct the training sessions on a long-term basis and to ensure further improvement of farmer performance beyond the project. This underpins our general commitment to provide help for self-help and enables the cocoa farmer cooperatives to continue growing towards sustainability on their own.

On farmer cooperative level a comprehensive Internal Control System was established, able to monitor compliance with sustainable practices and a necessary tool for group certification.